VB.NET Language in a Nutshell, Second Edition

Appendix D. Constants and Enumerations

This appendix consists of a reference for Visual Basic’s built-in constants and enumerations.

VB.NET defines several enumerations in the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace. For instance, the CompareMethod enumeration is defined as:

Enum CompareMethod
    Binary = 0
    Text = 1
End Enum

Thus, we can use the following expressions in our VB code:

CompareMethod.Binary
CompareMethod.Text

On the other hand, VB also defines two equivalent built-in constants in the Constants class of the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace that serve the same purpose:

VbBinaryCompare
VbTextCompare

Note, however, that VB does not define built-in constants corresponding to every member of every enum. For instance, there are no built-in constants that correspond to the OpenMode enum members. This enum is used in the FileOpen procedure/statement:

Enum OpenMode
    Input = 1
    Output = 2
    Random = 4
    Append = 8
    Binary = 32
End Enum

In this appendix, we list all of the VB constants and enumerations.

Visual Basic Intrinsic Constants

Table D-1 contains an alphabetical list of VB’s built-in symbolic constants. They are actually implemented as fields of the Constants class in the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace.

Table D-1. Visual Basic constants

Constant	Value
VbAbort	3
VbAbortRetryIgnore	&H00000002
VbApplicationModal	&H00000000
VbArchive	32
VbArray	8192
VbBack	Chr(8)
VbBinaryCompare	0
VbBoolean	11
VbByte	17
VbCancel	2
VbCr	Chr(13)
VbCritical	&H00000010
VbCrLf	Chr(13) & ...